Search - Brendel, Janigro :: Brendel Collection

This set collects six single releases (all transfers of recordings, originally released on LP, made from 1965 to 1968) at a reduced price. They show Brendel at his best and worst. The Chopin polonaises have integrity and some imagination--more like treatises on Chopin than convincing performances. Nobody will confuse Brendel's Liszt with the flash and excitement of Cziffra or Horowitz, but he has a good time with these showpieces and even inserts a cadenza of his own into the Second Hungarian Rhapsody. He also plays free with the text of the Mozart concerto's slow movements; all pianists should embellish these scores, which Mozart just regarded as outlines. These concertos are excellent, although the small orchestra still sounds a bit bloated, perhaps due to hall acoustics. The disc of Mozart solo music shows why the pianist sometimes earns the derisive nickname Brendull; he drains the drama from Mozart's most dramatic sonata and leaves the other pieces sounding uneventful. Brendel's Schubert is superb; heart and mind meet in ideal balance, probing intellect bringing out meaningful details in the context of deeply emotional music making. The thrilling march at the heart of Schumann's fantasy is much too subdued, but the rapturous playing of the finale makes up for a lot, and the Symphonic Études are quite powerful and committed, although lacking the posthumously published variations. All in all, a mixed bag, but a fascinating portrait of a major artist. --Leslie Gerber